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For the right, the federal election was all wrong: Hume

Collapse of Tories’ support shows path is clear for new approach.

Toronto Liberal campaign volunteer Steven Mantifel, with the victorious Rob Oliphant campaign, shows off a Justin Trudeau poster at The Local near Laird and Eglinton on election night on Monday. (Rene Johnston / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Stephen Harper wasn’t the only casualty of Monday’s election; it also signalled the death of Ford Nation.

Not only did cosying up with the Fords not help the soon-to-be-ex-Prime Minister, there’s evidence it further damaged his already-dim chances of a fourth win. Harper’s body language made his discomfort at the family-sponsored rally obvious, but desperate times . . .

Now that Ford Nation’s political toxicity has been fully exposed, Toronto can finally rid itself of the Fords’ the same way the country did with Harper earlier this week. Such a double whammy, as welcome as it is rare, represents a tectonic shifting of the political plates, a redrawing of the landscape, a game-changer, the start of a new era.

This should come as good news for Toronto Mayor John Tory, who can now stop looking over his shoulders and wondering what would Rob Ford have done. The idea that Tory need be no more than Ford without the crack no longer applies. Thanks to the election, John Tory is free at last, free at last, liberated from the shackles that have bound him — and the city — for much too long. It’s OK now to be progressive.

Then there’s the incoming PM, Justin Trudeau. His call to end the Conservative party’s autocratic and undemocratic ways and its war on culture was heard throughout the land. His plea for a better, bolder Canada appealed to a wide range of voters, but especially younger ones, mostly the “precariat,” who have been handed a crock of spit by their elders.

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That will increase pressure on the John Torys of Canadian politics to leave the past and join the modern world. Their focus on keeping things as they were and, more significantly, doing things as they have always been done, suddenly feels old and discredited. The advent of Trudeau Jr. presages a more forward-looking approach. Harper is history, over with, done, a spent force. Trudeau is the future, all potential, unformed, malleable and awaiting definition.

The message, though simple, is powerful: We can be who we want. The Canada that awaits can be the Canada we want, not some alien entity deformed by fear and forces beyond our control.

This new sense of empowerment will be felt most acutely in Canadian cities, which bear the brunt of a flawed political system that has left them overwhelmed and impotent. The crumbling state of municipal infrastructure across the country can no longer be ignored. When, for example, the City of Montreal says it has no choice but to pour vast quantities of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River, it’s clear we face a crisis.

Canadian cities need new powers, new money and a new agenda. Like Harper, the Fords and the unabashed primitiveness and paucity of their ambitions have no place in the Canada Trudeau personifies. Their insistence that government, indeed, the whole public sector, is the enemy and that taxes are the measure of all things rings hollow. No one likes paying taxes, but there’s growing realization that quality of life depends on more than a balanced budget.

If, as promised, Ottawa gets involved in transit and housing, Canadian cities could undergo a renaissance. Sadly, Toronto’s record on both files is wretched. Transit lurches along and thousands live in squalor while consultants prepare endless studies. Rather than open up a swath of waterfront real estate and remake the city, we pour billions into rebuilding the antiquated Gardiner Expressway.

The message of the federal election, we are told, was that Canadians are hungry — starved — for change. They’ve had it with the politics of resentment. They want the public’s business conducted in good faith, not bad blood. As the ad said, the future is friendly. At least, it could be.

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